A tale of two partners

Life events happen and plans need to change. We had a death in the family this past weekend and needed to move up our flights to Brussels by 3-days. I became the family travel agent and was in charge of calling the airlines to make changes for the four people traveling. 

I called Delta and was put in a 2-hour queue, understandable given the weather in the Northeast this week. I tried to change our flights online and the website continuously errored out. It became quicker to get with the twitter team to try to figure what the fare difference would be to change our flights. After about an hour I was quoted $850 per person, and the change fee was waived. The next day we decided to go ahead and execute the changes. The price rose to $954, and about an hour later someone at Delta reservations called me. He was unable to price the fare out as the twitter team had, and was quoting us $3,000+ per person. He had the ticket desk look for the days before and after and was able to get the fare difference down to $780-ish per person if we returned home on Sunday (Less than originally quoted). Ultimately, we pulled the trigger and made the changes. 

And now my experience with KLM, I called and was immediately connected with a representative. I explained the reason for making a change and was put on a 10-minute hold. The representative came back and said the ticket had been changed. No change fee, no fare difference, nothing. (In the interest of full disclosure, the customer is FlyingBlue platinum member) The ticket wasn’t a flexible ticket, KLM just went out of their way to take care of customer. 

I’m not upset by Delta in any way, they offr a bereavement discount, which is more than most airlines. All my conversations with them were pleasant. I am just so thoroughly impressed with KLM for doing right by the customer. My future in-laws, despite living in Paris, always fly KLM back to the US (even though it involves an extra connection). I now see why.